Iraqi Army Soldier Kills Americans After Christmas

The Pentagon is still trying to piece together exactly what happened in this instance. In a press release the pentagon states that there was a deadly attack on American soldiers on December 26th by an Iraqi Army Soldier that they were on patrol with during an operation in a province in Iraq. The Iraqi then fled but was later caught. During the incident he opened fire on 5 U.S. soldiers killing 2 and wounding 3. There are also 2 other Iraqi soldiers who are being detained in connection with the incident. U.S. officials in conjunction with Iraqi officials are still investigating the situation to determine if it was accidental, a case of friendly fire, or something more sinister.

Martin Luthur King Jr: His Struggle to be Equal Cost Him his Life

He was an American civil rights advocate, preacher, and Nobel laureate who gained prominence in the 1950's and 1960's for his leadership in the fight to secure equal rights for Black Americans.
Born on January 15 1929 he attended Morehouse College at the age of 15 and was ordained a baptist minister at age 17. He graduated from Crozor Theological Seminary as class president in 1951 and did his post graduate work at Boston University. While there he became interested in the teachings of the famous non violent Indian protester Mohandas Gandhi. His ideas about non violent protest would influence King in his future conflicts with the white establishment in the following years.
In 1953 The Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools (Brown v. Board of Education). The segregation that existed in many other aspects of life in the south would also be challenged by King in the wake of this decision.
In 1955 he organized a boycott of the public transportation system in Montgomery, Alabama (The famous bus boycotts in which Rosa Parks took part) to protest the unfair segregation that occurred as a matter of routine policy. During this time King was jailed, his life was threatened, and his home firebombed. The result of the year long protest was that The Supreme Court outlawed segregated busing in the city.
King decided that non violent protest would be the cornerstone of his approach and in light of his victory in Montgomery he took his fight for equality nationally.
In august of 1963 he led a famous March on Washington in a demand for equal rights during which he gave his memorable "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Monument before a crowd of hundreds of thousands. The following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to promote civil rights.
His opposition to the War in Vietnam in the following years was received with mixed reactions by both blacks and whites in the country. King believed that as long as the Vietnam War raged that Americans would be too distracted to concern themselves with the plight of Black Americans here at home. Others believed his opposition to the war to be unpatriotic.
The turbulent year of 1968 arrived with the Tet Offensive in Vietnam occupying the attention of the nation. King, by this time, was receiving constant death threats and suffering from stress, exhaustion, and he began to allude to his own demise in his speeches. On April 3 1968 he gave a speech in which he said: "I have been to the mountain top and seen the Promised land. I may not get there with you but we as a people will get to the promised land."
The following day he was shot by an assassin while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. It is believed he was shot by a white man named James Earl Ray but at various times since the shooting Ray had both admitted and denied he did it. Martin Luther King's body was returned to Atlanta, Georgia where in the following days he was buried at a funeral that was attended by over 100,000 people. When he was killed he was only 39 years old. His birthday, January 15th, is now observed as a national holiday.

Missile Defense for Commercial Jets Set for Testing

The federal government, prompted by fears of future attacks on commercial jetliners while taking off and landing from airports in the United States, is set this spring to test a 29 million dollar project to counter this threat.
The fear is that terrorist organizations may attempt in the future to attack U.S. airliners using shoulder fired missiles, which are available for sale on the world's black markets, in order to cause major loss of American life inexpensively, quickly, and dramatically. According to a government spokesperson describing the system: "it senses the missile launch then does some processing to make sure that its a missile and not something else in the environment and then it responds by shining an infared laser at the missile and causing it to swerve away from the aircraft." It is set for its first tests on some selected U.S. airliners in the spring of 2008. The airline industry is universally opposed to the system due to its expense.

China Eastern Airlines up over 300% for 07

Established on June 25 1988 China Eastern Airlines (CEA) is based in Shanghai, China. It operates international, domestic, and regional routes out if its main base Shanghai Pudong International Airport. It became the first airline to offer shares on the international market. It helped found China Cargo Airlines in a joint venture with Costco in 1998. The company is owned by the Chinese government (61%) and the rest is publicly held. It currently has over 29,000 employees which is up from 16,000 just three years ago.
After a flat year in 2006 when the stock did nothing much it started to make great gains in 2007. In January it was at about $20 a share. By May it was at $30. By September $50. In Mid September it skyrocketed to almost $130 a share. Since that time its has leveled off and by mid October it had fallen back to $70 a share. By early December it was back up to $110. The market has been falling back lately ( Its dropped over 250 points friday alone taking a 500 point hit for the week) and so has this stock. It closed at $85.88 on January 4 2007 after a nearly $5 loss for the day.
The good news is that despite the market troubles lately the Dow Jones was up for the year over 6%. This stock for the year was up over 300% going from about $20 to now over $80 so it has done well for those who invested in it last year to say the least.

Study shows Hospital not the Best Place to have Heart Attack

According to a study by the New England Journal of Medicine about 33% of all patients who go into cardiac arrest at a hospital are not treated with a defibrillator in the crucial first two minutes. This leads to a significant increase in the number of deaths in these cases and also an increase in the number of cases of severe brain damage. The study indicates that when defibrillation is delayed only 20% of patients survive long enough to leave the hospital as opposed to a 40% survival rate when the shock is given within the initial two minute window. The report blames understaffing in hospitals, patients admitted for problems other than heart trouble, and a lack of proper equipment for the slow response. Researchers found that emergency treatment typically arrives faster at a casino than in a hospital.

Gettysburg Address: Lincoln's Simple Eloquence

Perhaps the most memorable oratory ever uttered by an American president The Gettysburg Address was given in tribute to the thousands of souls lost on the field of battle only months before.
The battle of Gettysburg was the bloody tuning point of the Civil War. Fought over a period of three days just before the Fourth of July in 1863 it turned out to be the last major offensive of the Confederacy in the war. The cost for both sides was heavy. In three days the Union Army suffered casualties in excess of 3000 and over 20000 wounded and captured. The Confederates lost almost 2600 men with over 15000 wounded and captured.
The speech was given at the declaration of The Gettysburg National Cemetery on November 19 1863. Lincoln's brief two minute speech followed a two hour oration by one of the most famous speakers of the time, Edward Everett. In the newspapers the following day Everett's speech was prominently featured on the front pages while Lincoln's address was relegated to an inside page. Everett was so moved by Lincoln's words that he wrote him this note on the following day: "I wish that i could flatter myself that i had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."
Everett's speech has been nearly forgotten by history while Lincoln's perhaps can never be. Here below is the complete speech President Lincoln gave that day:

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
"Now we are engaged in a great Civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
"But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate---we cannot consecrate---we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us---that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion---that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain---that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom---and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth."

Rwanda 1994: 100 Days of Blood and Tears

We have all by now witnessed far too many examples in the world of man's inhumanity to man. Few however can compare to the genocide that took place in Rwanda in the spring of 1994 in terms of sheer numbers and the speed with which it took place.
It began as a dispute among two groups in Rwanda, The Hutu's and the Tutsi's. The Tutsi minority was considered the aristocracy and they dominated the Hutu majority for decades. In 1962 the Hutu's came into power and reversed these roles. In response to this over 200,000 Tutsi's fled to some of the neighboring countries and over time formed a guerilla army called the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
In 1990 This group invaded Rwanda and forced then Hutu president Juvenal Habyalimana to sign a power sharing agreement. On April 6 1994 he was killed when the small plane he was flying in was shot down while he was returning to Rwanda from a peace meeting. This event opened up the floodgates. Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsi's as well as some Hutu moderates and began to attack them. The killings were indiscriminate and spread from the capitol to the countryside. In Rwanda all individuals carry identification cards which specify their ethnic background. These "Tribal Cards" are how people were identified and singled out. Hutu's were also broadcasting hate propaganda over the radio to encourage the continuation of the killings. Some of the worst mass murders took place in churches where people had gone to seek refuge. In some cases victims were forced to kill their own family members before they themselves were killed. Most of the victims were killed either with machetes or beaten to death with clubs or sticks.
It ended in July 1994 after Tutsi rebels united to form a group and invaded Rwanda from some of the neighboring countries and managed to put down the Hutu's. By the end of the genocide it is estimated that there were between 800,000 and 1,000,000 dead. Countless thousands more had been raped, tortured, and beaten. Rwanda's population at the time was about 7,000,000 people. About 1/7 th of the nation had been slaughtered in the space of only three months.